


The Ship's Cat

by Morningstarofnight



Category: Forever (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Temporary Character Death, Crack, Gen, Light Angst, Post Reveal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-05
Updated: 2016-08-05
Packaged: 2018-07-29 11:17:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7682407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morningstarofnight/pseuds/Morningstarofnight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Henry really, really hates cats, namely because he's been stuck with an immortal one for over 200 years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ship's Cat

**Author's Note:**

> Came up with this idea a while back while procrastinating on writing an essay. That about sums it up.

"Aw, Henry, I didn't know you had a cat!" Jo gave the animal a sweet smile and bent down on her knees, holding out her fingers and wiggling them. Unimpressed, the heavily scarred tabby flicked its tail and remained in its position curled up on the coffee table.

With an irritated huff, her friend and partner in crime (solving) exited his bathroom. "Don't be nice to him, he'll only lord it over me later." Henry's tone was firm, but Jo could see his hands were still shaking and his hairline damp from where he had gone to splash water on his face. Her own hands gripped her mug of tea with a white-knuckled grip, but she pretended they didn't. The conversation was...going, sort of, and definitely not in the direction she thought it would be when she brought the odd picture to his doorstep. She barely knew what she had been thinking, but this--never this. Despite Abe standing reassuringly nearby, despite her attempts to keep all reaction to what Henry was telling her schooled beneath an expression of what she hoped was open and accepting honesty, midway through a tale about impossibilities and a long-ago murder Henry had bolted straight upstairs with no warning.

* * *

_"Easy, Henry, easy!" Abe called after him. The older (or was it younger now?) man turned to Jo, his face half apologetic but marred by deep worry. "Give him a moment, Jo. I think he needs a break."_

_"It's been like five minutes."_

_"Five of the hardest minutes of his life, I imagine. That's saying a lot."_

_Jo shuddered. "How old is he, Abe? Or..._ thinks _he is, or whatever?"_

_"Jo," Abe warned._

_"It's a serious question. He starts off by saying that's...that's_ him _, in a picture over twice his age, and now he's babbling about being on board some kind of ship before that. I don't know what to think, Abe. I really don't."_

_"Give him a moment." The repetition was spoken softly, but with a sternness that made Jo close her mouth. "He's never had to do anything quite like this before, or at least not that I can tell from what he's told me. The secret's always...slipped out, accidentally, in the past. With mixed results, mostly bad."_

_In that, at least, Jo could find something to sympathize with. No matter what the truth was in this situation, whether Henry had some kind of false belief that he was immortal or whether he really_ was _, either case would create a situation in which he shared his 'secret', and it would always seem like a panic-generating trust fall in his mind. And she couldn't imagine that many people took the news well._

_“Could I at least go upstairs? I want to make sure he’s okay and not doing anything rash.”_

_Abe hesitated, then nodded._

_That’s when Jo saw the cat._

* * *

 

"But he's such a tough, handsome-looking little guy. What's his name?" She figured Henry needed some kind of brief distraction.

"Tybalt."

"Shakespeare?" Jo looked up at him with a raised eyebrow.

Henry gave a long-suffering sigh. "No, more like Reynard the Fox. The ship's captain had a penchant for telling bawdy medieval trickster tales on deck, and so the ship's cat got named after one of the characters." The weight of the information slipped out without Henry catching himself, and he flinched in anticipation of further shock and disbelief. 

"What...Henry," Jo stood up suddenly. "You can't honestly be expecting me to believe...I mean, the _cat?_ How?" When Henry flinched again, she softened her tone. "Sorry, I didn't mean--"

"It's fine, Jo, please," Henry interrupted. "I'm fortunate enough that you are at least listening to my own story at this point."

"And several pieces of circumstantial evidence which would make sense in context," Jo added.

"Yes. That."

Silence lapsed between the two of them, as Henry tried to figure out a less ridiculous way of explaining the cat. "He jumped in front of me at the wrong time, and was thrown overboard along with my body." Henry's voice was quiet. "Whatever transformed me affected him as well."

Jo blinked. "Thrown...overboard? Henry?" The story they had put abruptly on pause had wormed its way back into the conversation almost instantly.

Henry sat down on the couch, and in a motion which seemed more like a spasm of panic than an actual thought process, jerked the unbuttoned collar of his shirt down and to the left, uncovering the mass of scar tissue over his heart. "I was shot, on board the ship _The Empress of Africa_ , year, 1814." The sentence sounded like a whispered recitation of something he had memorized.

            _Your hangup with that ship is deeper than Rick Rasmussen's murder._

The thought sprang unbidden into Jo's mind. She stared at the scar, really looking at it for the first time since she had seen it after rescuing Henry. It was a gunshot wound, but the bullet had left a messy spray of an entry. Not from a modern gun; she had seen too many gunshot wounds and suffered through too much of the antique gun chatter Hanson had picked up from his father to be able to dismiss it. She looked at the cat. It had a wide patch of fur missing from its shoulder and chest area, replaced by pinkish-white scar tissue. Which also seemed consistent with a gunshot wound.

Henry was shaking again. He pinched his eyes closed, and Abe, who had been standing in the doorway at the top of the stairs, walked slowly over to lay a hand on his father's shoulder. "Henry, what is it?" he asked. "I know that look."

"Nora," Henry managed to spit through gritted teeth. "After...this..." he gestured helplessly at his scar again, and emitted a mirthless laugh. "...only thing I could cling to...asylum..."

Jo couldn't hear the full sentence, but she picked up on the word 'asylum' and immediately took a step forward. "Whoa, Henry, easy. It's okay, nothing's going to happen to you, you're not going anywhere."

Henry cleared his throat. "I was shot, on board the ship _The Empress of Africa_ , year, 1814." His voice was clearer now, the mantra repeated and affirmed. "The ship's cat jumped in front of me at the same time, and we were both thrown over the side and reported missing at sea rather than murdered."

He shrugged and cast an uneasy glance at Abe. "I...we...came to our senses on the shore of a port town in the islands, and eventually found passage back to England on another ship."

Jo was suddenly under the impression that Henry was leaving significant details out of the story, namely the bit in between being thrown over the side of the ship and washing ashore at the port town. She didn't know what to make of that, but then, she didn't know what to make of any part of this tale other than that Henry believed it and both he and the cat had a scar to prove _something_ happened.

"The cat seemed reluctant to leave my side and, well," Henry said, and for the first time a light-hearted smirk crossed briefly over his face, "There he sits."

Tybalt yawned at Henry, jaws snapping shut with a loud click of the teeth. If Jo hadn't known better, she would have thought the cat had added some kind of sarcastic remark.

"So...if I'm getting this straight, the two of you are, what, an undead man and his undead cat returned to life to wander the world together?" Jo laughed nervously, hoping Henry wouldn't take the remark too personally.

"Not undead, just unable to stay dead. There is a difference." Henry had been the unwilling target of Lucas' obsession with zombies on multiple occasions. Some knowledge stuck with a person whether they liked it or not. "Our...medical condition...is rather serious and inconvenient."

           ... _Henry, are you okay?_

_Long night._

"The skinny dipping," Jo said suddenly. "That has something to do with this, doesn't it?"

Henry nodded. His shaking had subsided, but he still watched her with wary eyes, full of fear. "Any time either of us dies, our bodies-- _just_ our bodies, mind you--are transported to the closest water source." He smoothed down his shirt and shot a glare at Tybalt, who sat serenely on the table, unclothed except for fur. Jo could have sworn she heard Henry mutter "Lucky bastard" under his breath at the cat.

* * *

The cat, as it turns out, was trained, and Henry walked Tybalt on a leash and little harness next to Jo on the sidewalk the following morning.

"Henry, you do realize how dangerous walking a _cat_ in New York is, right?"

"All too painfully," he sighed. "But he gets up to far worse trouble when he's left home alone."

"I don't believe that for a minute," Jo teased. The cat leapt into Henry's arms at a crosswalk and Jo tickled under Tybalt's chin. "Look at him, he's so well-behaved."

"Clearly you've never seen a cat lockpick and open a door with a hatpin."

Jo stared at the large tabby. Tybalt purred back at her. "The cat can pick locks with a tool?"

"You'd be surprised what tricks a cat can learn in over two centuries."

* * *

The first dinner Lucas was invited to included an introduction to Tybalt. To Henry's obvious dismay, the little devil held sway over the assistant ME as well as Jo, as both of them gathered around in Henry and Abe's living room to pet and croon at the creature. Tybalt, for his part, basked in the attention before sauntering off to another room.

"You do seem to be right about Henry's secret getting out mostly by accident." Jo nodded at Abe, and gave Lucas a sympathetic wince. The young man had called her in a panic after Henry tripped down a flight of stairs and vanished to Limbo.

"Do I want to know when you found out?" Jo hedged.

Abe's expression froze with his mouth in a peculiar manner somewhere between amusement and frustration. "Never let that man try to gut a fish," he finally said.

* * *

Despite Lucas' first-hand experience, Jo had never been faced with the full truth of Henry's immortality until the night both he and the cat got stabbed. The attacker darted off into an alley before Jo could fire off a round, and on instinct she fell to the ground to try and stop the bleeding.

"I'll...be fine...remember?" Henry tried to laugh, but all that came out was a wheeze.

"You're still in _pain_ , Henry! You're still _dying_!" And so was the cat, curled up in a miserable huddle of fur on Henry's chest.

"Yeah," Henry whispered, and disappeared, followed quickly by Tybalt. Jo jumped back from the empty, blood-free pavement, heart hammering a mile a minute. There had been no warning, no sound, not even a friendly flash of light or a slight 'pop' to let her know that anyone had been there and was now gone. Just--gone.

When she got to the river with a sweatshirt and a pair of pants, Henry was struggling in the shallows, laying an impressive array of 18th century swears on the drenched, screeching tabby cat firmly attached to his head.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even know what happened here.


End file.
